View full sizeJim Commentucci / The Post-Standard, 2008Bassmasters Champion's Choice competitors take off from Oneida Shores County Park for the third day of fishing on Oneida Lake in August 2008.

Ron Curvin, who owns a home on the southeastern shore of Owasco Lake, was perturbed Monday.

“This past weekend, our lake was swarming with bass boats competing in a tournament,” he said. “In fact, when you count the two days of practice beforehand, they were out there for four straight days.”

“These type of things just don’t make sense for a lake this small. They’re making things (the fishing) a lot worse for us lake property owners.”

Curvin, a recreational fisherman, said what particularly irked him was that bass from throughout the lake were taken to be weighed at the county boat launch at Emerson Park on the lake’s outlet, at the northern end. That’s where all the fish were released afterward.

“This just all left a lousy taste in my mouth,” said Curvin, who said the fishing on the lake hasn’t been good recently and wonders how long it’ll take those fish to work their way back south near his part of the lake.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the complaint from an angler that local waterways are getting pounded by local, regional and even national bass fishing tournaments.

Owasco isn’t unique. Starting with the opening day of bass season in June, Oneida Lake has a bass tournament practically every weekend through the summer and fall. Add to that the many other local lakes that see smaller tournaments and derbies throughout the summer.

Do bass tournaments hurt the fishery? Is there such a thing as a lake or waterway being too small for a tournament?

Dan Bishop, regional fisheries manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said the state does not regulate bass fishing tournaments, and the tournament anglers are “operating within the boundaries of the regulations.”

He said all the participants have fishing licenses just like every other angler and can legally keep five fish a day, but they instead choose to release them after they’re weighed.

“It would be nice if they’d put them back where they caught them, but that would too costly and logistically difficult,” he said.

Bishop said he has heard complaints about the tournaments, but the DEC has not evaluated their impact on the fisheries. He said he’s heard anecdotally that bass fishing tournaments on the northern end of Cayuga Lake have decreased the quality of bass fishing there.

“It just comes down to different groups of people, with different ideas of how resources should be utilized,” he said. “Everyone is right. Just ask them.”

I asked Bishop about whether bass caught and released during a tournament tend to congregate in the area where they are released.

He forwarded me a summary of a recent study in Tennessee where researchers simulated a bass tournament at a large reservoir by catching 44 smallmouth bass. The fish were brought to a weigh-in site, fitted with ultrasound transmitters and released. The conclusion?

“Smallmouth bass dispersed rapidly away from the release site. ... After three to five days, (the fish) traversed an average distance of 1,475 meters (a little less than a mile). Most fish (72 percent) swam uplake and out of the 950-acre study area after six days.”

The study concluded: “The rapid dispersal of smallmouth bass may be relevant in systems that experience heavy tournament activity.”

View full sizeJohn Berry / The Post-Standard, 2005Jack Montgomery, 11, of Madison, N.H., fishes while he waits for his father, Jeff, to drive their boat out onto Oneida Lake to observe the action during the second day of the Ramada Champion's Choice, the regular season finale of the Bassmaster Elite Series, in August 2005.

Mike Cusano, of Clay, who is president of New York B.A.S.S. Chapter Federation, responded to Curvin’s comments: “What concerns me is this thought process, that tournament anglers who practice voluntary catch-and-release, even though they would legally be allowed to catch and keep their daily limits, are having more of an impact on fisheries than a user who chooses to keep their daily limit.

“I’ve never seen a fish walk away from a fillet board yet,” he said.

He said Owasco Lake is a public resource and “we all have a right to enjoy it.”

“If there are fish population issues that are documented and determined through science, then the DEC needs to come up with proper regulations and management strategies that apply to all users of the resource,” he said.

Cusano said his group’s members and the tournaments they participate in contribute to the local economy. He estimated that with motel, meals and gas, B.A.S.S. anglers last week spent $35,000 to $40,000 in Cayuga County.

In addition, he noted that members are aware of their high profile on local waterways and do more than just fish. He said local Bassmasters have participated in water chestnut pulls during the summer in local waterways, and they are making up a significant number of the volunteers engaged in the upcoming Oneida Lake cormorant harassment program.

Cusano said the irony is that last weekend was the first time his group had held a tournament of that size on Owasco, and the anglers found the going tough.

“For example, on Day 1 (Saturday) you had 144 anglers who only landed a total of 135 fish. Seventy anglers did not weigh in a single fish,” he said, adding that the winds were particularly strong that day. Sunday, heavy rains made angling difficult.

On Sunday, 144 bass were weighed and released. During the tournament’s two days, only four fish were reported as dead at the weigh-in, Cusano said. He said all fish caught during the two days of practice were released where they were caught.

He said his group had a permit from the DEC to release the fish in the center of the lake, but chose instead to release them at the Emerson Park launch because there were so few.

“Who should we be looking to blame for the bad fishing? The answer is nobody. It’s August. Fishing is generally tougher on all bodies of water right now,” he said. “Come September and October, people will be catching them at the same rate as before.

“Not catching any fish doesn’t prove anything, other than people don’t know how to catch fish when conditions are tough.”

Have additional thoughts on this issue? Send your comments to Outdoors Editor David Figura at dfigura@syracuse.com.